Joe Rogan Experience #1628 - Eric Weinstein

Eric Weinstein 0:00 (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out.

Narrator 0:04 The Joe Rogan Experience.

Joe Rogan 0:06 Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (upbeat music) Boom.

Narrator 0:16 Salud, my friend.

Joe Rogan 0:16 Oh, mazel tov. (glasses clink)

Eric Weinstein 0:18 Na zdorovie.

Joe Rogan 0:19 Oh. Those are the only ones I know.

Eric Weinstein 0:23 Yeah?

Joe Rogan 0:23 I don't know another, uh-

Eric Weinstein 0:24 Sherifin is eg?

Joe Rogan 0:25 ... salute.

Narrator 0:26 L'chaim.

Joe Rogan 0:26 Mazel tov, l'chaim, uh, na zdorovie. What are th- what's the other one?

Eric Weinstein 0:30 Skol.

Joe Rogan 0:30 It's gotta be.

Eric Weinstein 0:31 What's that? Skol.

Joe Rogan 0:32 What's skol?

Eric Weinstein 0:33 Skol, I don't know. Is that-

Narrator 0:34 Viking.

Eric Weinstein 0:35 ... Swedish, German, something.

Joe Rogan 0:36 Is that a Viking one?

Narrator 0:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 0:37 Oh.

Narrator 0:38 Slàinte or, uh, Irish-

Joe Rogan 0:40 Use your microphone, fella.

Eric Weinstein 0:41 (laughs)

Narrator 0:41 Sl- I don't know how to say it. Slàinte, or-

Joe Rogan 0:43 What is that one?

Narrator 0:43 ... the Irish one.

Joe Rogan 0:44 Oh, I don't know that one.

Narrator 0:45 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 0:45 I don't know that either.

Joe Rogan 0:46 Well, Jamie's throwing extra ones in there.

Narrator 0:49 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:49 There we go. What's up, brother? How are you?

Eric Weinstein 0:51 Uh, I'm well. How are you?

Joe Rogan 0:52 You look like a businessman.

Eric Weinstein 0:53 Is that right?

Joe Rogan 0:54 Are you a businessman?

Eric Weinstein 0:55 I'm trying to be one.

Joe Rogan 0:55 (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 0:56 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 0:56 I thought you were a professional Clubhouse guest.

Eric Weinstein 0:58 No, no, no. The thing is-

Joe Rogan 0:59 (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 0:59 Yeah, right. Um. It's the only platform that I have-

Joe Rogan 1:03 (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 1:03 ... more followers on than you because you're only there once, I think. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:06 Yeah. One and done. I'm- I'm out.

Eric Weinstein 1:07 One and done, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:08 It's just like podcasting for people who don't have a podcast.

Eric Weinstein 1:12 Uh, well, the interesting question is, do- do you think that it has any ability to figure out a- a way of killing podcasting? 'Cause that's what they think.

Joe Rogan 1:20 No. They're crazy.

Eric Weinstein 1:21 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:22 No. Impossible. Because the beautiful thing about podcasting, it's you're capturing a conversation.

Eric Weinstein 1:26 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:26 And it's in an uninterrupted... That- uh, the thing that happened with your brother-

Eric Weinstein 1:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:30 ... should've put the nail in the coffin in that- in that format. That-

Eric Weinstein 1:34 Oh, you mean the- the Struggle Session?

Joe Rogan 1:35 Yes. The fact that someone can come in-

Eric Weinstein 1:38 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:38 ... and- and kick everyone off that disagrees with them-

Eric Weinstein 1:41 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:41 ... take over the room, and that they did it just because they decided... Uh, what was the reason why they gave her the- the option to kick everybody out and gave her administrative power, or whate- whatever it is?

Eric Weinstein 1:52 I think she'd been historically oppressed or something.

Joe Rogan 1:54 Oh. That's why?

Eric Weinstein 1:56 I guess. I don't know.

Joe Rogan 1:57 Well, uh, eh, from what I understand, the conversation before she came on was very clumsy. That's what everybody was saying. It was like, that it- it- it left an opening-

Eric Weinstein 2:08 I see.

Joe Rogan 2:08 ... for someone like her to come and go, "Shut the fuck up. Get outta here." But the way she treated your brother, and the way she-

Eric Weinstein 2:14 I did not listen to this, by the way.

Joe Rogan 2:16 You shouldn't.

Eric Weinstein 2:17 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 2:17 It'll infuriate you. The way, you know, like, they- they- they cau- they said, he was talk- he said he's an evolutionary biologist.

Eric Weinstein 2:23 Yeah, let's find out.

Joe Rogan 2:24 And- and they were, these p- these kids were like, "Oh, you're into eugenics. You believe in eugenics."

Eric Weinstein 2:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:29 He's like, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no." And they- they basically just steamrolled him, called him a racist, and cut him off. It was- it was very infuriating. They didn't wanna have a conversation with him. They wanted to belittle him. They wanted him to proclaim that he's anti-racist and, you know, and-

Eric Weinstein 2:44 I've seen this movie before. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 2:45 Yeah, it's not good. But it's just a fact that that can happen-

Eric Weinstein 2:49 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:49 ... in the platform. You know, it was just, (sighs) when- when- when you're doing something like that, when someone can come in and just kick all the other people out that they don't agree with-

Eric Weinstein 2:58 Yeah, sure.

Joe Rogan 2:58 ... like, you could just join any conversation that's already rolling-

Eric Weinstein 3:01 Well, of course, he could've left. He just doesn't wanna back down.

Joe Rogan 3:03 Well, he got kicked out. He was trying to make sense. He was trying to express himself.

Eric Weinstein 3:07 He's always trying to make sense.

Joe Rogan 3:08 I know. It's a- it's a problem.

Eric Weinstein 3:10 I don't know.

Joe Rogan 3:10 It's a real problem.

Eric Weinstein 3:10 We gotta- we gotta fix that.

Joe Rogan 3:11 (laughs) But I mean, the- the Clubhouse thing seems a, like a fun, social thing to do. Like, uh, I enjoyed doing it with Tim Dillon because Tim was in here with me and we were yucking it up and goofing on it, and then your brother jumped in on the conversation, and Naval was in the conversation, and-

Eric Weinstein 3:28 That's where it gets more interesting, which is the- the serendipity that's possible, because normally, the logistics of getting us all in one place-

Joe Rogan 3:35 Yes.

Eric Weinstein 3:36 ... it's- it's difficult, it's expensive, nobody really is up for it because it- it- it's probably not as high-quality as a point-to-point conversation. But the serendipity of saying it.

Joe Rogan 3:45 Yes.

Eric Weinstein 3:45 "Oh, okay, I saw two people I never thought would be in the same room, and then 12 other people," and, you know, at first, I think that's exciting, but then, uh, the- the danger of it is that they're gonna burn through the novelty effects. You're- you're gonna have seen all these people collide.

Joe Rogan 3:58 Well, maybe. I mean, there's an, uh, you know, it's almost like a chess move.

Eric Weinstein 4:01 Right.

Joe Rogan 4:02 Like even though you know how-

Eric Weinstein 4:03 Commodities are always in their favor.

Joe Rogan 4:04 Yeah. You know how the pieces move, but there's an insane number of possibilities that could take place.

Eric Weinstein 4:10 True, but I- I do think there's a weird way in which y- you're always in danger of setting up too many different ways in to the same basic source that's the value.

Joe Rogan 4:19 Yes.

Eric Weinstein 4:19 And so, you know, you can say, "Okay, I've got a website, I've got a Substack, I've got a podcast, I've got a book." How many ideas do you have? I mean, that's- that's kind of the issue.

Joe Rogan 4:27 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 4:27 One of the things that I think, um, makes you dominant is that you have an insane breadth. And most people are really not that capable of going outside of a few issues.

Joe Rogan 4:39 Well, uh, I'm not capable of it either. I'm just curious. (laughs) I just-

Eric Weinstein 4:44 And fearless.

Joe Rogan 4:45 I'm not scared of-

Eric Weinstein 4:45 Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Joe Rogan 4:46 ... I'm not scared of having conversations that are way over my head. I just think the Clubhouse thing, um, they've gotta work out th- that, what happened. Like, they've gotta work that out so that doesn't happen. The- the flaw is in letting someone come in and then kicking other people out so they can't communicate anymore.

Eric Weinstein 5:04 Th- you could do that... Uh, y- the- the moderator privilege there-

Joe Rogan 5:07 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 5:07 ... is something that you shouldn't give out like candy, because that's what opens it up to-

Joe Rogan 5:11 But here's the thing. Why would you wanna give out the moder- why do any-

Eric Weinstein 5:13 People are weak.

Joe Rogan 5:14 But why does any- wh- but why does anybody want to be the moderator?

Eric Weinstein 5:17 Because they-

Joe Rogan 5:17 That's not good.

Eric Weinstein 5:18 It's horrible. There's an actual status and caste system of people who need more going on in their lives, like-

Joe Rogan 5:24 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 5:24 ... "I was called up on stage. I was made a moderator."

Joe Rogan 5:27 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 5:27 And then you realize that, you know, for people whose lives have gone online due to COVID, meaning has been scarce. And so, in a weird way, this is what's proxying for meaning.

Joe Rogan 5:37 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 5:37 'Cause the human mind will just attach meaning to any kind of distinction like that.

Joe Rogan 5:41 For a lot of comics, it's replaced performing, so they're not going up at night, but they're going into Clubhouse every night, and they'll jump in the room-

Eric Weinstein 5:48 Le- Leah Lamar, for example, is really-

Joe Rogan 5:50 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 5:50 ... uh, really active, and I, you know, what I told her was, "Pioneer something new. Don't try to do something old. Figure out what this new thing is better at, and be the first."

Joe Rogan 6:00 Well, she has a lot of people on that, right?

Eric Weinstein 6:02 Yeah, a lot.

Joe Rogan 6:02 She's- A lot more than she has on the other platforms.

Eric Weinstein 6:06 I think she's- she's doing really well and she's doing a lot of stuff, and what I hope is that, um...... you know, she'll pioneer something genuinely new. Like for example, radio drama was dying when I was a kid. There was the CBS Radio Mystery Hour or something.

Joe Rogan 6:19 Hmm.

Eric Weinstein 6:19 We used to listen to that when we'd drive up to-

Joe Rogan 6:21 I used to love those.

Eric Weinstein 6:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 6:23 They were cool.

Eric Weinstein 6:23 Right. And-

Joe Rogan 6:24 That's gone. You know with a bunch of people acting out voices.

Eric Weinstein 6:27 E.G. Marshall was the host of those things and it was like a throwback to Orson Wells and that stuff.

Joe Rogan 6:32 Hmm.

Eric Weinstein 6:33 Wouldn't it be cool to get some retro thing? Because the, the idea behind Clubhouse is to take Discord and subtract functionality (laughs) from it and that's the product. It's less, it's got less functionality than Discord and that causes you to ha- say, "Okay, well, I can't text you. How am I gonna work around all these constraints?" And it's like, you know, a great wine is only supposedly grown when you frustrate the vines.

Joe Rogan 6:55 Really?

Eric Weinstein 6:56 Yeah. That's what I, that's what I hear.

Joe Rogan 6:58 Ho- how's that work? H- how do they frustrate the vines?

Eric Weinstein 7:00 That if you give the, if you give the vines perfect soil and climate and all that stuff, they'll produce much fruitier stuff and, and it won't be perfectly optimized for fermenting-

Joe Rogan 7:11 Hmm.

Eric Weinstein 7:11 ... into wine.

Joe Rogan 7:12 Really? Hmm.

Eric Weinstein 7:14 Look, there's a lot of BS in wine, so I don't wanna say 100%-

Joe Rogan 7:17 So-

Eric Weinstein 7:17 ... but this is definitely something you'll hear.

Joe Rogan 7:19 Have you seen the documentary Sour Grapes?

Eric Weinstein 7:21 No.

Joe Rogan 7:21 Oh my God.

Eric Weinstein 7:22 Tell me.

Joe Rogan 7:22 You have to watch it. Um, I-

Eric Weinstein 7:24 Are you a wine guy?

Joe Rogan 7:25 No. I like wine. I, I actually love wine. I don't know a fucking damn thing about it. I just go, "That's good." And I take pictures of it on my phone when I like it and then I buy that wine later.

Eric Weinstein 7:36 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 7:36 I don't know what the fuck's going on. I'm, I'm, I'm as clueless-

Eric Weinstein 7:39 You know that really nobody does? Almost nobody.

Joe Rogan 7:42 That's what the documentary's about. The documentary's amazing and it's about this guy who got in with all these real rich wine connoisseurs.

Eric Weinstein 7:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 7:52 Including a friend of mine who's in the film.

Eric Weinstein 7:55 Oh no.

Joe Rogan 7:55 Yes.

Eric Weinstein 7:56 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 7:56 Yeah, um, and this guy realized that there is only a limited amount of rare wine. Like 1974 blah, blah, blah.

Eric Weinstein 8:07 Right, right, right.

Joe Rogan 8:09 So this dude decides he is going to fake this wine, and so he makes these labels.

Eric Weinstein 8:17 Uh-huh.

Joe Rogan 8:17 He m- And apparently this gentleman who's featured in this film who wound up getting arrested and he's in jail right now in Colorado and apparently they're, um, they're detaining him. They're, they're about to deport him 'cause he's about to get outta jail. They're gonna deport him back to Indonesia, which is where he's from. But he... I think it's Indonesia. He had an amazing palate. He was a, like, he was a real legitimate wine collector. And then somewhere along the line, he realized that buying and selling wine was good 'cause he was kinda quartering the market on a lot of wines. He was spending a ton of money. He realized, "You know what? I can fake these wines. I understand what th- these wines are." So he started mixing wines together and he m- c- developed all these formulas about how to mix, like, cheaper wines and he would sell them as, like, these gr- super rare, you know, 1970 whatever wines. But where he fucked up is, spoiler alert, one of the Koch brothers-

Eric Weinstein 9:14 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 9:14 ... bought like $4 million worth of wine from him and one of his friends started... Uh, he had a friend who was an investigator of wine, apparently that's a thing.

Eric Weinstein 9:23 Wine investigator.

Joe Rogan 9:24 Guy who, uh, really understands wine was telling him, no, you know, like, he bought bottles from Thomas Jefferson-

Eric Weinstein 9:29 Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 9:29 ... like from the 1700s.

Eric Weinstein 9:30 Well, Chateau d'Yquem of Jefferson I think is still drinkable.

Joe Rogan 9:34 Really?

Eric Weinstein 9:35 Well, there's this one particular kind of Sauternes which comes from the Semillon grape in the Bordeaux region or, uh, and it's made from this noble rot so you get the grapes to sort of have this disease that concentrates the sugar, and I believe that Chateau d'Yquem is, like, weirdly drinkable beyond...

Joe Rogan 9:53 Hundreds of years.

Eric Weinstein 9:54 Yeah, crazy.

Joe Rogan 9:55 Wow. That's wild. 'Cause this guy just, uh, the Koch brother, he just had this stuff and was, just, uh, had it on display. I mean, he has this immense wine, I mean this is worth-

Eric Weinstein 10:05 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:05 ... fucking untold amounts of money, right?

Eric Weinstein 10:07 What are you gonna do with that money, right?

Joe Rogan 10:08 He just has-

Eric Weinstein 10:09 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 10:09 ... an insane wine collection. Millions and millions of dollars, but he has $4 million of fake wine and, uh, he realized it as they were going through his collection, like, that there was, um, magnums from, uh, a year where they didn't make magnums-

Eric Weinstein 10:25 Oh, that's bad.

Joe Rogan 10:25 ... and this, so this guy starts going over the, the... And then what happened was a gentleman from France got involved, France I should say.

Eric Weinstein 10:33 Oh, okay. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 10:33 He got involved and, uh, he is an actual wine maker and his wine was being plagiarized. He was, they were faking his wine and so he came in and saw the counterfeit wines and even in the auctions, like, the, like, he was pointing out in the auction booklet, like, "These are fake wines. Like, we did not have this wine in this year. The, the label is incorrect. This is incorrect." And then, you know, there were some misspellings on some of the labels and this guy made fucking millions of dollars in wine-

Eric Weinstein 11:06 Oh.

Joe Rogan 11:06 ... and sold thousands and thousands of bottles and so initially they thought he was doing it all himself in his apartment, but then when they realized the sheer volume of the fake wine this guy sold and put out there, that there had to be other people involved, but he was the only one that went down for it and they think maybe his brothers, uh, in Indonesia were also involved in this scheme somehow. But they, they feel like there's thousands and thousands of bottles of this stuff still in circulation and still being sold. There was an auction that was, they were selling this guy's wine, uh, his, uh, I believe his name is Rudy, they were selling his wines, um, at a Christie's auction-

Eric Weinstein 11:47 Mm.

Joe Rogan 11:47 ... like, well, long after he had been exposed and so these guys on these, uh, the, the, you know, these wine connoisseur email lists, they're, they're, you know, emailing each other back and forth and "Hey, like, Rudy's wines are being sold here. This is bullshit. This is fake." And then they have these experts come in and test the stuff, but what's crazy is one guy in the film and one, he's like, "This is one of the real bottles that Rudy sold me," 'cause Rudy was selling real wine-

Eric Weinstein 12:11 Right.

Joe Rogan 12:11 ... before he started selling bullshit wine. He's like, "This is one of the real bottles, like, try it." And the guy tries it and he's like, "Oh yeah, this is really good." And then another guy gets a hold of it and he goes-... when did you open this? And he goes, "Uh, well, a couple hours ago." He's like... (sniffs) He tastes it, he goes, "This is bullshit. This is not real." He goes, "This doesn't have the vivacity. It doesn't have the flavor. This is not... I've, I've tasted this wine. This is not the wine." Because apparently, and I don't understand this at all-

Eric Weinstein 12:37 Right.

Joe Rogan 12:37 ... the palate-

Eric Weinstein 12:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 12:39 ... of a wine connoisseur is this thing where they can literally... Like, you can give them a, like a flight of wines-

Eric Weinstein 12:46 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 12:46 ... and they can tell you, "This is a-"

Eric Weinstein 12:48 They go full James Bond.

Joe Rogan 12:49 ... "Petit Shiraz from-"

Eric Weinstein 12:51 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 12:51 ... "blah, blah, blah." And, and I don't... Again-

Eric Weinstein 12:54 Well-

Joe Rogan 12:54 ... I'm so out of my wheelhouse here.

Eric Weinstein 12:55 But I think-

Joe Rogan 12:56 I like Buffalo Trace whiskey.

Eric Weinstein 12:58 I'm with you there, sir.

Joe Rogan 12:58 That's what I'm saying. I know this tastes good.

Eric Weinstein 13:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 13:01 I don't... You know?

Eric Weinstein 13:01 But, okay, well, first of all, should we try to drink this in the weird wine way?

Joe Rogan 13:05 No. No, this is American. We don't fuck around here. It's got a buffalo with testicles on the label, son. Look at that, right there.

Eric Weinstein 13:12 Like that.

Joe Rogan 13:13 Yes. This-

Eric Weinstein 13:14 But-

Joe Rogan 13:14 ... is older than America, by the way. You know this?

Eric Weinstein 13:16 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 13:16 This company, Buffalo Trace, they started making whiskey in 1773.

Eric Weinstein 13:22 I did not know.

Joe Rogan 13:22 It's literally three years older than America itself.

Eric Weinstein 13:25 So, the thing that I did not understand, I think, about wine is that if you're trying to taste your wine, you can't possibly get at what's this high-end stuff, because it's only your nose that can determine the- these differences.

Joe Rogan 13:40 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 13:40 That nobody's got enough stuff going on on their tongue to tell great wine. So you've got this thing called the retronasal passage in the back of your mouth.

Joe Rogan 13:48 Can I get a graph, Jamie? Retonal- nasals passage? Can you-

Eric Weinstein 13:51 Yeah, where do we-

Joe Rogan 13:52 Can I get a graphic?

Eric Weinstein 13:54 ... where do we pull this up? Um, and so this whole thing about burbling, where you tu- you turn your mouth into a bong, right? Here.

Joe Rogan 14:00 Oh, yeah?

Eric Weinstein 14:00 Let's do it.

Joe Rogan 14:01 How you do it?

Eric Weinstein 14:04 (sighs)

Joe Rogan 14:04 And they smell it?

Eric Weinstein 14:05 Well, y- you start... You're getting this fountain with air coming up, and then you're opening the back of your (laughs) ... You're opening your retronasal passage and-

Joe Rogan 14:13 You do get a little bit of a smell.

Eric Weinstein 14:14 Right? And you... And that's where the magic happens. So the weird thing is somebody buys really expensive wine, and then they try to taste it.

Joe Rogan 14:22 Ah, here we go.

Eric Weinstein 14:23 There we go.

Joe Rogan 14:23 That's for beer.

Eric Weinstein 14:24 Well, it's for anything, like-

Joe Rogan 14:26 I know, but, uh...

Eric Weinstein 14:26 Once, once you get-

Joe Rogan 14:26 It's interesting.

Eric Weinstein 14:27 Once you get addicted to, um-

Joe Rogan 14:30 Smelling shit?

Eric Weinstein 14:30 ... trying... Yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:31 Maybe that's like dudes are into smelling feet, like that's what's going on.

Eric Weinstein 14:36 You're not trapping me in that conversation.

Joe Rogan 14:38 No, we had a, we had a th- a guy-

Eric Weinstein 14:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:39 ... at Kill Tony-

Eric Weinstein 14:40 Okay.

Joe Rogan 14:40 ... who's really into feet. He was fucking hilarious. Were you there, Jamie, that night?

Narrator 14:46 I don't think so.

Joe Rogan 14:46 It was, uh... K- Killed Tony recently at, uh, Anton's, and this, this kid went up. He was really funny. He was a funny comic. But he was really funny, and he was talking about how he's really into girls' feet.

Eric Weinstein 14:57 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 14:57 And it ma-... And he was, like, c- completely unapologetic. Like... And he, he was hilarious. And he was just talking about how th- he likes to smell girls' feet and we were all crying.

Eric Weinstein 15:06 You notice how everybody else's attraction is weird, and whatever your thing is, it's like, "Yeah, I don't know. I'm just into it."

Joe Rogan 15:11 Well, it was funny. I mean, it was definitely weird 'cause it's unusual-

Eric Weinstein 15:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:15 ... that someone would be... It's... I don't think it's unusual that guys are into feet. I think it's a lot more usual than you think. But I think what is unusual is that he was so, uh, open about expressing the fact that he was into feet in front of a group of strangers-

Eric Weinstein 15:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 15:28 ... in a one-minute set on Kill Tony. 'Cause Kill... Do you k- do you know how Kill Tony works?

Eric Weinstein 15:33 Not really.

Joe Rogan 15:34 Kill Tony is, uh, the foundation... It was one of the foundations in, in co-... in Los Angeles, and I think it's gonna be the foundation in Austin, of the open mic community.

Eric Weinstein 15:43 Okay.

Joe Rogan 15:44 Because it gives a comic one minute. He, the... Tony has... Tony Hinchcliffe d- developed the show, and him and Brian Redban, they do it together, and Tony has a hat. They shake the hat up, and they... Or a bucket. They reach in the bucket and they pull out a name.

Eric Weinstein 15:58 Okay.

Joe Rogan 15:58 Random. And then that person doesn't know if they're gonna perform or not. There's maybe 30 people that throw their names in, and maybe five get to perform. And Tony pulls that name out, calls the guy or girl or nonbinary folk, and they come running onto the stage and they do one minute of standup.

Eric Weinstein 16:15 Got it.

Joe Rogan 16:15 And this guy did one minute of standup about how-

Eric Weinstein 16:17 On feet.

Joe Rogan 16:18 ... he gets hard-ons because of feet, and it was just hilarious. But he was talking about the smell of, of feet, and a girl got on stage and took her shoe off and he smelled her foot, and it was just... It was preposterous.

Eric Weinstein 16:31 Okay.

Joe Rogan 16:32 But it's... It gives these comics an opportunity to, like... Th- uh, on that... at that night... I think it was me and Adam Egert that night, but it's like, Donnell Rawlings has been on. You know, all... Like, you name a com-... Do- Dom Irrera's a, a favorite guest. Like, gr- great comics are on it all the time. So there's a professional guest that sits there and talks to the comics, the comic does a set, and then we'll ask them... I've done it a bunch of times. We'll ask them questions-

Eric Weinstein 16:58 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 16:59 ... like, "How long you been doing comedy?" Like, "What, what... Where'd you start?" W- you know, "What town did you start out in?" And then, then th- they tell you, "What are you doing now for money?" And, you know, they have great stories, and it's, it's fun, 'cause you get a chance to see the beginnings. And some of those comics have gone on, like Ali Macofsky, who has opened up for me in fucking arenas. She started out on Kill Tony.

Eric Weinstein 17:19 Okay.

Joe Rogan 17:20 Yeah. And so it's like you could develop a legitimate professional career from this, but it's like, a really good path for the- these amateurs to get like one minute of stage time. So they hone this one minute, hoping they're gonna get called onto the stage. And usually, like, if you're a d- halfway decent comic and you've been doing it, you know, six months, a year, you probably have a minute. You probably have a minute where you can get up there and rock it for a minute. And when they d-... Some of them are terrible, but some of them are really funny. Some of them, they've-

Eric Weinstein 17:47 What's the best way to get people opened up almost instantly with no foreplay?

Joe Rogan 17:51 To go on s-

Eric Weinstein 17:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:52 Yeah, you don't... There's no way. You know, you have just have... It's... There's a different way for you-

Eric Weinstein 17:58 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 17:58 ... than it would be for Jamie, than it would be for me. Everybody's different.

Eric Weinstein 18:01 I've seen it be different for you on different nights.

Joe Rogan 18:03 Yeah, it's always different.

Eric Weinstein 18:04 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 18:04 I always... You gotta... It's just like... It's a living thing. The audience is a living thing. It depends entirely upon what's happened before you went on stage. It depends entirely on what time of night it is. You know, there's a lot going on.

Eric Weinstein 18:16 I'm always a little freaked out when I see you at the store, because I don't associate...... like, I got to know you before I ever got to see you be funny i- in front of a crowd.

Joe Rogan 18:27 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 18:28 And it was just like, "Holy shit, you can do that?" You know? And, and it's a different persona. Like, you can clearly see that a different mind has clicked in. It's like the "I know kung fu" moment.

Joe Rogan 18:38 (laughs) It is like that, right?

Eric Weinstein 18:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 18:40 And it's like, if you saw me do kung fu, you'd think that too. (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 18:44 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 18:45 I don't really know any kung fu-

Eric Weinstein 18:46 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 18:46 ... but, you know. It's, uh, it's a thing, you know? You gotta know how to do it. Then you gotta, when you do it, you gotta treat that audience like, you know, you gotta bring the good shit. You gotta, you gotta come with the good, good jokes.

Eric Weinstein 19:00 Well, it's like, it's like, when, when I saw Steven Seagal (laughs) playing blues guitar-

Joe Rogan 19:04 (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 19:04 ... at first I was just like, "What?" (laughs)

Joe Rogan 19:05 Is he good?

Eric Weinstein 19:07 He, he, he ... I don't wanna say anything negative but I've seen parts of it that have been really, really pretty good. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I'm, I'm, um ... I, I'm trying to figure out what happened to the guitar and what happened to COVID, uh, changing the world of guitar because everybody was indoors-

Joe Rogan 19:26 COVID changed the world of guitar?

Eric Weinstein 19:28 Oh, yeah. Lots of people had time on their hands and no way to socialize.

Joe Rogan 19:31 Oh, so they practiced.

Eric Weinstein 19:31 And, and, and the, and the amps have gotten wildly better.

Joe Rogan 19:34 In the last year?

Eric Weinstein 19:35 Uh, I bought a, uh, a modeling amp, uh, for 250 bucks that changed my life from Positive Grid, called the Spark Amp. We were talking about it with Jamie and it is a replica of like, all the gear that real guys have, that hobbyists, like, don't even know what it is. I can play with it and it'll model all of these setups. So suddenly, like, I'm smarter and then, you know, this weird thing I was telling Jamie about.

Joe Rogan 20:01 But this had to have been developed long in advance before COVID.

Eric Weinstein 20:03 It's been ... Y- yes, but it ... I think a $250 item that just blows your mind may be relatively new and there's, I think there's one coming from, um, oh, a Neural DSP. So th- th- there's like competing ... And, and J- and J- Jamie was talking about the Helix. So there's like, this collection of these things and I hadn't spent $300 on my rig for 30 years or something. And I did this and suddenly, um, a little bit more magic was like, available to me. And then I-

Joe Rogan 20:38 Really?

Eric Weinstein 20:38 And then I put a, a brief clip of m- of myself playing on Instagram and I got contacted by like, some of the greatest guitarists in the effing world. When, when Tosin Abasi and, uh, Joe Robinson, uh, and Ryan Roxie of ... Who's the guitarist for like, Alex k- Alice Cooper, contact you and they're like ...

Joe Rogan 20:59 This is you jamming. Let ... Give me some of this. Give me some of this, Jamie.

Eric Weinstein 21:04 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 21:04 You jamming to Glen Beck? Is that what it says? (guitar music plays)

Eric Weinstein 21:20 That wasn't actually the one that-

Joe Rogan 21:22 That's pretty fucking good.

Eric Weinstein 21:23 If you put the-

Joe Rogan 21:23 And you're doing that without a pick.

Eric Weinstein 21:25 Well, the thing, I didn't, I-

Joe Rogan 21:25 You're doing that with your fingernails.

Eric Weinstein 21:26 If there's another one, um, a li- yeah, that one.

Joe Rogan 21:31 Is that one better?

Eric Weinstein 21:31 And I, I didn't know you were supposed to ... Yeah, you, you ... That was the one that did it, I think. (guitar music plays) Apparently you're supposed to use a pick, but I didn't know.

Joe Rogan 21:48 (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 21:54 Basically I'm playing air guitar with a real guitar.

Joe Rogan 21:56 That's really good, dude.

Eric Weinstein 21:57 Well, that's, that's the amp and the fact that somebody set up my strat.

Joe Rogan 22:02 What do you mean by that you didn't know you were supposed to play with a pick?

Eric Weinstein 22:04 Dude, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I'm doing. And so-

Joe Rogan 22:07 How did you learn how to do this?

Eric Weinstein 22:08 Uh, I hang out in a room alone (laughs) it's sort of dark and lonely. But, um ...

Joe Rogan 22:13 Really?

Eric Weinstein 22:14 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:14 When did you learn this?

Eric Weinstein 22:16 Th- this is part of the thing. I do a bunch of things that I d- I don't do with other people, right? I just learn shit on my own.

Joe Rogan 22:22 Right. But when did you learn this? How long ago?

Eric Weinstein 22:25 I don't even know. Some of it in the last year.

Joe Rogan 22:27 But, but when did you start playing guitar? You're being quiet.

Eric Weinstein 22:30 I ... No, I've had a guitar-

Joe Rogan 22:31 I don't like ... I don't like it. I'm gonna call you out on this. I don't like it.

Eric Weinstein 22:32 Okay.

Joe Rogan 22:33 Very uncomfortable. (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 22:33 I've had a guar- I've had a guitar since I was (laughs) ... go F yourself. I've had a guitar since I was 15 but I-

Joe Rogan 22:40 Oh, okay. So you've been playing-

Eric Weinstein 22:40 ... but I don't know when-

Joe Rogan 22:41 Okay.

Eric Weinstein 22:41 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:41 You've been playing forever but you're self-taught.

Eric Weinstein 22:43 But ... Yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:44 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 22:44 And then you have these like, plateaus where suddenly you, you take your head out of your ass and just say-

Joe Rogan 22:47 Well, Hendrix was self-taught, you know?

Eric Weinstein 22:49 Almost all of the really great people-

Joe Rogan 22:51 Stevie Ray Vaughan I believe was self-taught.

Eric Weinstein 22:52 Albert King was self-ta-

Joe Rogan 22:53 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 22:54 It's, it's ... All of these guys were like, on the next level. Where are they gonna learn it from?

Joe Rogan 22:59 Hmm.

Eric Weinstein 22:59 You know, who creates a Danny Gatton or a Roy Buchanan?

Joe Rogan 23:01 Right.

Eric Weinstein 23:02 Nobody knows. Um-

Joe Rogan 23:03 I don't know who those guys are but I'll trust you.

Eric Weinstein 23:05 They'll blow your mind.

Joe Rogan 23:06 Will they?

Eric Weinstein 23:07 Dude.

Joe Rogan 23:07 I wonder how Gary learned. Gary Clark Junior?

Eric Weinstein 23:10 Gary Clark Junior-

Joe Rogan 23:11 He ... Did he learn?

Eric Weinstein 23:12 ... is psycho.

Joe Rogan 23:13 What does it say? Self-taught, bitch! Woo!

Eric Weinstein 23:17 Yeah. So I can't do that stuff but the point that, that I'm starting to come to is I realize when ... Different communities behave differently. There are angry, jealous communities and there are open-hearted, "We're glad to have you on board" communities. And I could not believe the quality of the people who reached out to me to give me encouragement for whatever stupid ... And this thing, I don't know how to hold a pick. I don't know how to do this stuff with a pick. I just can't-

Joe Rogan 23:43 I think as long as the sound is good, they don't care. Is that correct?

Eric Weinstein 23:47 I think more than that. I think that the idea is that there's this one of us thing. Like, okay, I can see that he's spent time in the trenches trying to figure out what we do and most people don't care and he does.

Joe Rogan 23:59 Right. Right, right, right.

Eric Weinstein 23:59 You know? And so the idea is, um ... You know, I, I did a guitar podcast recently and I just expected this other thing which is like-

Joe Rogan 24:09 What do you mean by you did a guitar podcast?

Eric Weinstein 24:12 Ryan Roxie for Alice Cooper says, "I want you on the podcast as a fellow guitarist."

Joe Rogan 24:16 Oh, his, his podcast?

Eric Weinstein 24:17 Yeah. And so like, Joe Satriani, you know, was sitting in that chair and then here I am saying like-

Joe Rogan 24:24 ... wow.

Eric Weinstein 24:25 Well, but in part, um, when people are, like, fans of... I mean, y- you do comedy, you do acting, you do jujitsu, you do so many different things that you know that there's some things that you don't do at the same level as other things.

Joe Rogan 24:41 Yeah, for sure.

Eric Weinstein 24:41 When people see that you're, like, taking an interest, like if I found out that you were, you know, a, um, a road racing bi- you know, bicyclist or something like that, people would be like, "Wow, Joe, Joe's one of us." They're happy to have you on board.

Joe Rogan 24:55 I feel what you're saying, yeah.

Eric Weinstein 24:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 24:57 Especially, like, weird esoteric things, you know, weird-

Eric Weinstein 25:01 Like mandolin, for example, whenever I do m- something on mandolin, you know, I have all these people, "Oh, I'm one of those people too, I have a mandolin." You know?

Joe Rogan 25:09 It's probably pretty rare, right? How many people-

Eric Weinstein 25:11 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 25:11 ... are playing mandolin?

Eric Weinstein 25:12 I don't know. It, it was, it was competitive with the guitar in the late 1800s I think, and then the guitar sort of just blew it out of the water. But there, there's a new thing called octave mandolin, which is down an entire octave, so it doesn't have that kind of really bright tinny sound. And so I'm gonna pursue the octave mandolin and see whether...

Joe Rogan 25:34 Is there any benefit in a kid learning how to play the recorder?

Eric Weinstein 25:36 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 25:37 It seems like they're just fucking with those kids when they give them a recorder.

Eric Weinstein 25:40 Well, I... Look, there's some cool stuff from, like, Telemann if you're really into-

Joe Rogan 25:44 Right, but, like, no one plays professional recorder, right?

Eric Weinstein 25:46 Can you get chicks with a recorder? I don't know.

Joe Rogan 25:48 I don't know if you can.

Eric Weinstein 25:49 No.

Joe Rogan 25:50 You, you would get those chicks anyway.

Eric Weinstein 25:51 Well, you know the scene with Belushi and the guitarist?

Joe Rogan 25:54 Yes. (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 25:54 I can't... You have to be very careful what you play.

Joe Rogan 25:57 I love that scene.

Eric Weinstein 25:57 I know, we all do.

Joe Rogan 25:58 I love that scene. It's so real. It's so real.

Eric Weinstein 26:01 Sorry. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 26:02 Yeah, it's so real. I've been at a party where a guy busts out a guitar and starts singing and you're like, "Oh my God, w- who are you? What have you done?"

Eric Weinstein 26:11 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 26:13 (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 26:13 Well, what are the skills that you would want to acquire at this, uh, stage?

Joe Rogan 26:16 Um, I think music would be really interesting to learn, either play the piano or play the guitar. I just don't have the time.

Eric Weinstein 26:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 26:23 I don't have the time, I, I don't have the time to do the things that I already do. You know?

Eric Weinstein 26:27 How about hyper accelerating one of those things? Like, getting somebody who understands your brain, because you're a great learner.

Joe Rogan 26:34 I'm good at listening.

Eric Weinstein 26:35 Yep.

Joe Rogan 26:36 I, I l- like, uh...

Eric Weinstein 26:37 But you have beginner's mindset a lot.

Joe Rogan 26:39 Yeah, well I think it's important.

Eric Weinstein 26:40 You have to.

Joe Rogan 26:40 I do a lot of things from scratch. You know, like, I think, uh, that I got good at jujitsu is listening. I didn't get good at jujitsu because I figured it out myself. I get good 'cause my friend Eddie, Eddie Bravo-

Eric Weinstein 26:51 Right.

Joe Rogan 26:51 ... is a great coach and, and my ins- original instructor Jean-Jacques Machado is a great coach and I just listen to them.

Eric Weinstein 26:56 What made Eddie a great jujitsu intellectual?

Joe Rogan 27:00 Eddie thinks way outside the box, way, way, way outside the box, and he's just real creative, you know, 'cause he's a, he's a musician. Like, that's, that's what he does outside of, uh, jujitsu.

Eric Weinstein 27:12 And comedy?

Joe Rogan 27:13 Yeah, he's done comedy too. He actually... He was always really funny and I tried to get him to do comedy, like, way back in the day and he did a few open mics, but it was just too harrowing for him. But then when he started doing a lot of seminars and got really comfortable teaching, 'cause-

Eric Weinstein 27:28 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 27:28 ... he, he became a jujitsu instructor and started teaching for a living, then he got much more comfortable in front of large groups of people. And then he started doing standup again within the last five or six, what is it, five years or so? Something like that. And then he's very funny. He's just a funny guy.

Eric Weinstein 27:46 I've seen him.

Joe Rogan 27:46 Like, me and him hang out, we fucking laugh so hard. He's like... Other than Joey Diaz, I probably laugh harder with Eddie Bravo than anybody that I know. But he's just... he thinks different than people, and sometimes it's a problem when he starts, like, entertaining some ideas that are completely preposterous and he goes deep with them, because he's figured out a way with jujitsu to take ideas that a lot of people didn't think were good-

Eric Weinstein 28:09 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:09 ... and figured out a way to tap people out with those ideas. Like, he took some ideas and he said, "No, you just gotta..." Like, like for instance, here's a perfect example. Like, there's certain kicks that, um, if you just showed someone it, they would say, "Well that's not practical."

Eric Weinstein 28:26 Right.

Joe Rogan 28:26 "You're not gonna be able to do that." The problem is you just haven't reached a proficiency like maybe like a Stephen "Wonderboy" Thompson or something like that where it will become practical. Like a specific kick is like a spinning wheel kick, it's a wild, cool looking kick, looks great in a Bruce Lee movie.

Eric Weinstein 28:41 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:41 Right? "Wonderboy" Thompson, he's, he's a famous mixed martial arts fighter, he pulls that off in fights because he's a 57-0 kickboxer and one of the best strikers that's ever competed in mixed martial arts. So his proficiency in striking is so elite that he can do things that if you just taught... some people would say that's impractical, that'll never work in a fight. But it will work in a fight if you reach the highest level of proficiency. And Eddie had that same mindset with jujitsu techniques and he figured out a way to make some techniques that a lot of people thought were impractical not just possible but really, um, very, uh-

Eric Weinstein 29:20 And repeatable.

Joe Rogan 29:21 Yes. Not just repeatable, but high percentage.

Eric Weinstein 29:24 Okay.

Joe Rogan 29:25 Like, especially if you, if someone is in a situation where they don't understand what's happening, so they don't understand what's in danger or where the counters are or where, you know, where, where you're trapped. He's just real creative, you know? But again, like, he gets some tripped up, like he starts believing some wacky shit, but then he gets out of it. He'll, he'll let things go after a while, but, you know, he... It's because he entertains ideas and he'll, he'll... 'cause he doesn't trust mainstream thought.

Eric Weinstein 29:53 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 29:53 So mainstream thought, whether it's in jujitsu or mainstream thought, whether it's in economics or whatever, he's just-

Eric Weinstein 29:58 But aren't we all struggling with this a little bit? Like, there's no part of the mainstream that looks at all credible to me anymore.

Joe Rogan 30:04 Well, it's real wacky now, right? And here's a, here's a wacky one where the New York Times, um, is they, th- they're debunking this idea that the Wuhan lab may have been the source of COVID when they're... like, when all these different people are talking about it.

Eric Weinstein 30:23 You've been on this for forever.

Joe Rogan 30:24 We have been on it forever. What it's, it's, it's extraordinary is the, The New York Times is still saying debunked claims with no evidence whatsoever. You know, Saagar Enjeti from the Rising and The Hill had this whole piece about it on his, uh, YouTube channel.

Eric Weinstein 30:39 I love what they're doing.

Joe Rogan 30:40 They're the best. They're the best, because-

Eric Weinstein 30:42 Well he's got two channels. Have you been on-... either?

Joe Rogan 30:44 Um, well I've, I've only had him on here and Kristol together.

Eric Weinstein 30:48 Okay.

Joe Rogan 30:48 But what I liked about-

Eric Weinstein 30:48 By the way, that was, what you guys did right at the beginning of that, where they explained what happens... I didn't mean to cut you off, but-

Joe Rogan 30:53 That's okay.

Eric Weinstein 30:54 Um, what happens in the cycle when your team wins and your team loses, and how b- they've both broken out of that, and they've thrown that away now.

Joe Rogan 31:00 Yes. That was-

Eric Weinstein 31:01 That was-

Joe Rogan 31:01 That, they, they are what we need.

Eric Weinstein 31:02 That, that was 10 minutes-

Joe Rogan 31:02 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 31:03 ... that I needed to hear, that you j- I thought you broke new, you, the three of you guys broke really new ground.

Joe Rogan 31:08 They're what we need.

Eric Weinstein 31:09 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:09 The, the, there's a, a reasonable person on the left and a reasonable person on the right, and they're both committed to honesty above all. Right? They might have different philosophical perspectives-

Eric Weinstein 31:18 I think they're coming together. I think Kristol's coming towards Saagar because she's seeing-

Joe Rogan 31:22 Yes.

Eric Weinstein 31:23 ... the rot on the left. And-

Joe Rogan 31:24 Yes.

Eric Weinstein 31:24 What my hope is, is that she's going to be, um, a credible progressive who's rejecting all this nonsense progressivism.

Joe Rogan 31:33 Yeah. I think, I think you're right. She's very smart and so is he, and the two of them together are wonderful.

Eric Weinstein 31:38 Right. What were you gonna say-

Joe Rogan 31:39 They're magic.

Eric Weinstein 31:39 ... before I cut you off?

Joe Rogan 31:40 What I was gonna say is, they were talking about how the New York Times is, is talking about this deb- I forget who they were quoting, who, who was, uh, entertaining this, uh-

Eric Weinstein 31:50 Redfield.

Joe Rogan 31:50 ... idea. Was that one of-

Eric Weinstein 31:51 The CDO, ex-CDC guy?

Joe Rogan 31:52 That's right, the CDC guy.

Eric Weinstein 31:53 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 31:53 That he was, uh-

Eric Weinstein 31:54 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 31:54 ... entertaining this idea, this, uh, this debunked idea of this, eh, emanating from a lab. But it's not debunked. Not only is it not debunked, it's more possible than ever. But the problem is, the idea was originally associated-

Eric Weinstein 32:08 With Trump.

Joe Rogan 32:10 ... with Donald Trump. So, these m- motherfuckers at the New York Times still have it in their head that they can't admit that-

Eric Weinstein 32:15 I don't know that that's what's going on, Joe. I-

Joe Rogan 32:16 What do you think it is? Well ...

Eric Weinstein 32:18 That what they do, it's a weird move. They're just-

Joe Rogan 32:20 We should tell people exactly what, what they're saying.

Eric Weinstein 32:22 Sure.

Joe Rogan 32:22 Okay. The, the, the former head of the CDC is saying that it's more probable than not. He's not saying it's absolute. He's saying it's more probable than not that it escaped from a lab.

Eric Weinstein 32:34 Right.

Joe Rogan 32:34 And he details it, and he actually predates it. He goes pre, uh, you know, he goes, like, deep into September and October, he believes it might have, uh, emanated around that time it started spreading. They, the reason why is ... And it, it all makes total sense. This is in, a, a very unusual laboratory. The laboratory had been cited in 2018 for safety protocol violations. The laboratory works on the exact same kinds of coronaviruses that cause this worldwide pre- pandemic on bats. They work on bat coronaviruses.

Eric Weinstein 33:09 Yep.

Joe Rogan 33:09 And this is one of two level four labs that are in this area. So, this, this whole thing is so, it's so much more likely that it emanated from the lab. But the problem is, the, the narrative was Donald Trump is racist. Donald Trump calls it the China virus. Donald Trump says it came from a lab. It can't have come from a lab 'cause Donald Trump's always wrong.

Eric Weinstein 33:34 That's one possibility. I'm worried about something beyond that.

Joe Rogan 33:37 What are you worried about?

Eric Weinstein 33:38 The way that they make this move is that they synonymize the lab leak hypothesis with a synthetic virus engineered from scratch.

Joe Rogan 33:48 Oh.

Eric Weinstein 33:48 So, in other words, the idea of, like, maybe somebody growing, uh, horseshoe bat coronavirus in human lung tissue to accelerate natural selection. 'Cause, like, we don't know how to engineer it, but we, if you let, if you let (laughs) natural selection engineer it, you can accelerate that, right? So-

Joe Rogan 34:05 Right.

Eric Weinstein 34:05 ... instead of saying, um, "We don't know what to make of accelerated natural selection in a lab leaking," they try to make this move which is like, "Uh, you know, there's no sign that this was engineered in a lab." And you're like, "Okay, well, you changed what the hypothesis is in order to say what you're saying to protect your future credibility." And the thing that I'm really freaking out about, you've been talking about it, Brett's been talking about it, I've been talking about it, all sorts of people have been talking about this one for a year. I increasingly think that none of these organizations think that they owe us any kind of truth. That when they get caught, it's just like, "Yeah, of course we had to say that." Like, "What?" "Yeah." You know, like, th- this Time Magazine article about, "Of course we fortified the election." "Y- Y- you what?" "Oh, yeah, we fortified it." "Oh, uh, I d- ... Yeah, Trump was right about a conspiracy." Like, in this-

Joe Rogan 34:57 Who was-

Eric Weinstein 34:57 In the article.

Joe Rogan 34:58 ... who are they quoting that ... Who were they quoting that said they f- they fortified the election? Who's-

Eric Weinstein 35:01 There was apparently some entire group under one guy with hundreds of activists who told their people, "Don't riot in the streets. Have a dance party instead." I would highly recommend, uh, it's Time Magazine.

Joe Rogan 35:17 I read the, I read the, the, the blurb about the fortifying, and I was like, "Hmm. Yeah, that's a disturbing quote, but what does it mean? What did they, what are they trying to mean?"

Eric Weinstein 35:26 What they mean with, with their ... The claim of the article is, "We went right up to the door (laughs) meddling with the election, but all we cared about was free and fair."

Joe Rogan 35:36 Hmm.

Eric Weinstein 35:36 "And we had a huge conspiracy, so Donald Trump wasn't wrong, there was a huge conspiracy, but we are so committed to democracy that even though we hate Donald Trump, and the passion that, you know, won't let go f- 24/7, uh, we still would never do anything against an election."

Joe Rogan 35:51 The problem is, with a guy like Trump, uh, you can almost justify some-

Eric Weinstein 35:55 But that's what I said.

Joe Rogan 35:56 ... horrible horse shit. Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 35:58 I s- if you claim, uh, that you're, uh, you have to fight all enemies foreign and domestic, and you claim that he's a Russian asset, you're pretty much saying that you have to do something drastic.

Joe Rogan 36:07 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 36:07 And so, the number of things that people claim is what the problem is, because they're not all compatible. And, and what I'm trying to get at more broadly is over and over I see the same move, which is deny, deny, deny, we get caught. "Yeah, limited hangout. Yeah, we did that shit."

Joe Rogan 36:23 But-

Eric Weinstein 36:23 "That's the kind of stuff we do because we have to do it."

Joe Rogan 36:25 But I don't think they're saying they got caught. I think they're saying that what we did was make sure the election was fair.

Eric Weinstein 36:31 It was, I think, it ... The concept of a limited hangout where you know that something is too big to hold back, so you push a part of it into the public, not all of it, but a limited-

Joe Rogan 36:43 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 36:43 ... and you, you let the public think, "Okay, well, now you know the truth," and it stops there. And then they stop asking questions because they've got a new toy to play with.

Joe Rogan 36:50 Have you been paying attention to the border crisis shit?

Eric Weinstein 36:52 Um, where it's not bad when Democrats do it?

Joe Rogan 36:55 It's not bad when Democrats do it, and it's even worse than when Trump was doing it, but it's still not bad.

Eric Weinstein 37:01 ... it's-

Joe Rogan 37:01 It's bad, man.

Eric Weinstein 37:02 I don't know how to be a logical Democrat anymore.

Joe Rogan 37:04 Yeah, I don't know how to do it either.

Eric Weinstein 37:05 I don't, I don't like-

Joe Rogan 37:06 I'm, I'm politically homeless.

Eric Weinstein 37:07 I'm politically homeless now. And, and-

Joe Rogan 37:09 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 37:09 ... these people have done it because it's, it's a low-IQ movement or it's a high, uh, (laughs) it's a low-integrity movement or it's a low-IQ movement. It's a... It can't be, it can't be high IQ, high integrity.

Joe Rogan 37:22 You and I had a conversation on this per- very podcast, and I said that I would vote for Trump before I would vote for Biden.

Eric Weinstein 37:28 I remember that.

Joe Rogan 37:28 Didn't w- And people got mad at me. I didn't wind up voting for either one. I voted for Joe Jorgensen, because I'm like, "Uh, this is almost like a protest vote." But-

Eric Weinstein 37:36 Yep, I did the same.

Joe Rogan 37:37 But my point was exactly what we're experiencing right now. The guy does press conferences, and they're like something out of a fucking macabre movie. I, I feel like I'm, I'm terrified. It's like Grandpa's at the wheel-

Eric Weinstein 37:49 Dude.

Joe Rogan 37:49 ... and he's not on his medication. This is nuts, man.

Eric Weinstein 37:52 I know.

Joe Rogan 37:53 It's nuts here, and then now they're calling it, th- they're not calling it the Biden administration anymore. They're calling it the Biden-Harris administration, which to me is, like, letting you know that there's only a matter of time before it's President Harris.

Eric Weinstein 38:05 Because when he said this thing to this kid in Florida, "I'm a, I'm, I'm a..." Something, you know, f- didn't say caretaker president, but, uh, you know, "I'm, I'm just sort of here to warm the seat. You're the future."

Joe Rogan 38:17 (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 38:17 And you're just thinking like, "Okay, well, you're the oldest president in, in American history by a long shot. Why do we need a tran- oh, transition? I'm a transitional."

Joe Rogan 38:25 But here's the thing. Bernie's older than him, right?

Eric Weinstein 38:29 Jimmy Carter's still in the play, in the game.

Joe Rogan 38:31 Jimmy Carter's still in the game, 'cause he could do a second term?

Eric Weinstein 38:33 Yeah. He's only g-

Joe Rogan 38:34 He's at 1,000 years old. He just got over cancer.

Eric Weinstein 38:36 Dude, we just... I'm just... Uh, I'm, I'm hoping-

Joe Rogan 38:39 I understand what you're saying.

Eric Weinstein 38:39 ... that I'm joking.

Joe Rogan 38:40 You're joking.

Eric Weinstein 38:40 I hope so.

Joe Rogan 38:41 But Bernie is lucid.

Eric Weinstein 38:43 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 38:43 That's my point. I believe Bernie is at least Biden's age. Am I correct?

Eric Weinstein 38:48 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 38:48 Or is he older?

Eric Weinstein 38:48 Older.

Joe Rogan 38:49 He's older, but very lucid.

Eric Weinstein 38:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 38:51 When he talks, he talks clearly and, you know, and apparently he said he's gonna run again, which is kinda crazy. So he's get... What is he gonna do? Like how is that gonna work? He's gonna go independent?

Eric Weinstein 39:02 Uh, why can't we have anyone younger than us?

Joe Rogan 39:08 Well-

Eric Weinstein 39:08 I'm 55. I, I, I could vote for Tulsi.

Joe Rogan 39:11 Yes, I could vote for Tulsi. You know who I think has a shot, is the fucking governor of Florida.

Eric Weinstein 39:16 Okay.

Joe Rogan 39:17 I think he has a shot. I really do.

Eric Weinstein 39:19 Um, maybe this is gonna depress me too much.

Joe Rogan 39:22 Maybe it will. I mean, I don't know w- what you have to do to, uh, run the country correctly. What you can't do is what Trump did, is, is say, "Fuck you," to the people that don't agree with you. He's, he didn't unite people. He was like, "I'm doing it, and I'm kicking ass, and you're coming with me." And everyone was like, "Yeah!" All the Trumpsters were like, "Yeah!" But everybody else is like, "Ah! This motherfucker!" He, he riled them up. He made them angry. He made them furious.

Eric Weinstein 39:50 I understand, but we can't have any solution that could work, so we have to, to select from this menu of the unworkable people.

Joe Rogan 39:56 Right. Well, I don't know if that's necessarily true.

Eric Weinstein 39:59 Okay.

Joe Rogan 39:59 It's just what we have at the moment. It's like, you go to a restaurant and you're like, "Well, all they ever have is hamburger." "Well, that's just what's on the menu currently." Like, you know, an- another, uh, manager could take over this restaurant and they could expand the menu.

Eric Weinstein 40:11 (laughs) I was in Cambridge, Massachusetts for almost 20 years and, uh, there was a Cafe Algiers, it had soup of the day, and we always used to ask because every single day for 20 years it was lentil soup.

Joe Rogan 40:20 Every day?

Eric Weinstein 40:20 Every day soup of the day was lentil soup.

Joe Rogan 40:23 Well, Cambridge is a mess.

Eric Weinstein 40:24 Really?

Joe Rogan 40:25 Yeah. Cambridge is-

Eric Weinstein 40:25 You haven't been there?

Joe Rogan 40:26 ... a crazy place. Yeah, I used to do-

Eric Weinstein 40:26 But you're from Massachusetts.

Joe Rogan 40:27 Yeah, I used to catch Rising Star.

Eric Weinstein 40:29 Oh, right. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 40:29 That was, like, the weirdest place to perform. It's like, that was the beginning of the PC movement. It was like the PC movement in the '80s was, like, the first warning shots of wokeness, what we're experiencing now.

Eric Weinstein 40:41 Actually, if you go back to Clint Eastwood, uh, in one of the Dirty Harry, uh, movies, he's... It's a really interesting scene where he's told that he has to, uh, approve new candidates for the force, for detective, and there's a female candidate. And he's not happy, but the reason he's not happy is super subtle. He asks, "How c- how fast can you run the 100?" Like, he-

Joe Rogan 41:04 Wow.

Eric Weinstein 41:04 Like, his, his thing is not about male versus female.

Joe Rogan 41:07 Right, performance.

Eric Weinstein 41:07 It's like, "Don't, don't touch the requirements."

Joe Rogan 41:11 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 41:12 And, um-

Joe Rogan 41:12 Well, that's how people feel about the military. They're, they're, they're lowering standards of military physical tests-

Eric Weinstein 41:18 Right.

Joe Rogan 41:19 ... to, uh, enable more women to get involved-

Eric Weinstein 41:22 And the issue-

Joe Rogan 41:22 ... or out-of-shape people.

Eric Weinstein 41:24 (laughs) The... That's what I want.

Joe Rogan 41:25 (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 41:26 I want more septuagen- With no ageism in the Special Forces.

Joe Rogan 41:29 Yeah. Mm, Jesus Christ. Well, uh, Tim Kennedy had a post about this recently because, um, there was someone who was, uh, who was hired by the Pentagon d- for some sort of diversity role.

Eric Weinstein 41:42 Right.

Joe Rogan 41:42 And they just let him go because they found out that he had some posts, uh, that were very questionable on social media about Hitler and Trump, and then so they got rid of him. They moved him to a new... But, but the point was that there, there's no... Tim Kennedy's point was there's no room for the concept of diversity with trained killers. He was like, "Our job is killing people, where there's no room for woke politics or political correctness."

Eric Weinstein 42:06 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 42:06 "Like, we're there to get shit done." What are you doing, Jimmy? You got something for us? I was looking for the story. Oh, he, he's like, "We're, our job is to get shit done and, and, and kill bad people."

Eric Weinstein 42:15 Right.

Joe Rogan 42:15 "Like, there's no room for diversity. You know, we don't, we don't need to send a, uh, a fucking South Pacific trans man in to do the job because it would make everybody look good in the newspaper. Like, you get the best killer for the job, and they're the ones who complete the task." And-

Eric Weinstein 42:30 Well, so the idea is no relaxation of standards-

Joe Rogan 42:32 Ruthless requirements.

Eric Weinstein 42:33 ... and totally open. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 42:34 That's, I mean, that's what BUD/S is, right?

Eric Weinstein 42:36 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 42:36 When they, when they b- choose SEALs, it's a ruthless elimination of anybody that's gonna quit.

Eric Weinstein 42:42 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 42:42 And that, they, you need that. You can't, you can't lighten that up at all 'cause then you won't have SEALs.

Eric Weinstein 42:48 Right.

Joe Rogan 42:48 You'll have some fake thing that you've, you've, you've created some, just... You know, it's like fight training or marathon running or... You, you can't say, you know, like, "You don't have to run the full 26 miles because, you know, you're a, uh, this or a that." You know? Like, no, you gotta fucking... This is the, this is the standard. This is what it is. The person who wins, wins. Like, that's how it goes. It's like, "You gotta get under three hours," or whatever the fuck, they can do it now. Isn't there a guy who could do it in two hours?... isn't there a dude? Isn't that the new, the new, uh-

Eric Weinstein 43:19 Who can do what in two hours?

Joe Rogan 43:20 ... the marathon?

Eric Weinstein 43:20 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 43:21 Yeah, the, the new-

Narrator 43:22 Well, yeah, yeah, they made a way for him to break it in, like, seconds.

Joe Rogan 43:25 With some funky shoes, right?

Narrator 43:26 They did a lot, they did a lot of work to get it to happen, but it, it did happen.

Joe Rogan 43:28 And he's a beast on top of that.

Narrator 43:30 Correct, correct. Yes.

Joe Rogan 43:33 (sighs) You can't lighten standards, man.

Eric Weinstein 43:35 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 43:36 You can't discourage competition because the people that you would like to see succeed aren't succeeding. There's a place for everybody and all sort of... You, you know, life is a giant spectrum of activities-

Eric Weinstein 43:46 Right.

Joe Rogan 43:47 ... and disciplines and, and, and, you know, and things that people are en- enjoying. You can't, y- you can't decide that you don't have enough of these people and this, so you're gonna change what it is. There's not enough white people-

Eric Weinstein 44:00 So that's what we're doing. That's what we're-

Joe Rogan 44:00 ... in basketball. We're gonna slow it down.

Eric Weinstein 44:01 Right.

Joe Rogan 44:02 And what are you gonna do? (laughs) You know, you can't.

Eric Weinstein 44:05 There's a reduction for white ball players.

Joe Rogan 44:06 You can't do that. You can't, you know? It's like, it is what it is.

Eric Weinstein 44:09 Yeah. Okay. I'm with you.

Joe Rogan 44:12 I'm with you.

Eric Weinstein 44:13 And, uh-

Joe Rogan 44:15 The problem is if you say that, you're a racist or a sexist or a homophobe or something.

Eric Weinstein 44:18 Why don't we just agree there was... all of those things, pay the fine, and get on with it?

Joe Rogan 44:22 But we're not. We're just humans, right?

Eric Weinstein 44:23 But if you're none of those things, but it just doesn't matter, right?

Joe Rogan 44:26 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 44:26 Yeah, I, I think that the thing that I don't wanna do is I don't wanna pay the tax every day. "Of course, Joe, I'm not saying this. I'm not saying-"

Joe Rogan 44:33 Right, but that's what they want you to do.

Eric Weinstein 44:34 Well, it's, yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:34 The people that are woke, what it is is a forced compliance-

Eric Weinstein 44:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:37 ... to an ideology and they'll, they'll bully you into compliance. Before they will hear your terms, they will bully you into compliance, and that's what happened with your brother on Clubhouse.

Eric Weinstein 44:46 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:46 They bullied him into a specific-

Eric Weinstein 44:49 I understand, but, like-

Joe Rogan 44:49 ... conversation before they allowed him to speak.

Eric Weinstein 44:52 Yeah, Islam, for example, has a lot of overhead. In the name of Allah, the compassionate, the merciful, and Muhammad, peace be upon... But they just write P-B-U-H, so they only use up four characters (laughs) so they don't have to do the whole thing.

Joe Rogan 45:03 But it's important though.

Eric Weinstein 45:03 We should be able... Uh, but what I'm trying to say is we should be able to say something like P-B-U-H about the whole thing that we have to say every time we wanna have an opinion-

Joe Rogan 45:11 Hmm.

Eric Weinstein 45:12 ... because it's just too expensive. The overhead is killing us.

Joe Rogan 45:15 (smacks lips) I see what you're saying. Yeah, I, I, I, I just-

Eric Weinstein 45:18 Like all usual caveats. I, all I wanna say is, all usual caveats. And then I wanna abbreviate that, so I go, all usual caveats, and then I can get on with what I'm starting to say.

Joe Rogan 45:27 My hope is that the outrage Olympics will be exhausting for people-

Eric Weinstein 45:32 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 45:32 ... and they'll eventually come out on the other end and realize that y- what's important is just be nice, just be nice and be a good person and, and, and stop bullshitting people.

Eric Weinstein 45:43 H- how long is this taking? I mean, the late '60s were over very quickly.

Joe Rogan 45:47 The pro- well, the problem is it's weaponized.

Eric Weinstein 45:50 I know.

Joe Rogan 45:50 Right? Like, accusations are weaponized and any time something happens, you can politicize that event and, and use it to-

Eric Weinstein 45:57 But it's so effing boring. I can't stand how boring it is.

Joe Rogan 46:01 But it's not just boring, it's dangerous, right?

Eric Weinstein 46:02 It's dangerous and... Well, this is the thing, right? It's, it's these twin... People talk about this in terms of, like, combat, you know, dangerous and boring.

Joe Rogan 46:11 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 46:12 And the... It's much more dangerous the more bored you get, 'cause mostly nothing's happening.

Joe Rogan 46:17 Right.

Eric Weinstein 46:18 And that's the thing that, uh... you know, I wrote an entire article about this with Kayfabe, which is that you, in order to get wrestling to be exciting, you had to move away from actual wrestling, and that's the origin of professional wrestling-

Joe Rogan 46:30 Right.

Eric Weinstein 46:30 ... is that matches would last too long and then mostly nothing would happen and then somebody'd be crippled for life.

Joe Rogan 46:36 Yeah, yeah.

Eric Weinstein 46:38 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 46:38 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 46:38 It wasn't a good business model.

Joe Rogan 46:39 Yeah. Um, it's just we're, we're at a weird time where people are pushing narratives and, uh, and then other people are joining in because that narrative fits along with their ideology, even though they know there's some horse shit-

Eric Weinstein 46:56 Right.

Joe Rogan 46:56 ... to what that narrative is. Like, a good example is, um... Do you, are you aware of that 65-year-old woman that got beaten up in New York City?

Eric Weinstein 47:03 Oh, no.

Joe Rogan 47:04 It's a sad story because this guy... It's all caught on security camera. There's this guy. He's kicking, he kicks the 65-year-old woman down and kicks her when she's down, stomps her, and just, it's horrific.

Eric Weinstein 47:17 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 47:17 And there's these three guys, at least two guys, that are watching and they do nothing. They're inside the building and they're watching.

Eric Weinstein 47:23 Like this carjacking video where the guy's just filming and doing nothing.

Joe Rogan 47:27 Yeah. But anyway, this guy-

Eric Weinstein 47:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 47:29 ... is kicking this woman while these two guys watch. And then de Blasio goes on TV and he blames it on Trump. He blames it on the White House and the current administration-

Eric Weinstein 47:41 (sighs)

Joe Rogan 47:41 ... because it was an Asian woman, but what it, what it was, was a guy who was released from prison who had stabbed his mother to death. So the guy was... he was criminally insane, and because of these liberal ideas about rehabilitation-

Eric Weinstein 47:56 Joe, I can't.

Joe Rogan 47:57 ... and murder. This guy had only done... I think he'd only done, like, 10, 10, 10 or 12 years in jail for stabbing his mom to death. And so they let him go, and what does he do? He finds some woman and kicks the shit out of her. Was... Now, here's where it gets weird. Did he kick the shit out of her because she was Asian, because he was aware of the propaganda against Asian people that he, that de Blasio believes was influenced by Donald Trump's portrayal of the virus as being the Chinese virus? I don't know.

Eric Weinstein 48:28 I can't-

Joe Rogan 48:28 I don't know, but it-

Eric Weinstein 48:29 But every time we consider these things-

Joe Rogan 48:30 ... but the point is, but the point is-

Eric Weinstein 48:31 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:32 ... the reason why that guy did that is 'cause he's criminally insane.

Eric Weinstein 48:34 Right.

Joe Rogan 48:34 It's not because of Donald Trump. The reason why that guy did that is 'cause he shouldn't have been on the street-

Eric Weinstein 48:38 Yeah, but once-

Joe Rogan 48:39 ... 'cause he's a bad person.

Eric Weinstein 48:39 But they're forcing us to talk about it over and o- there... The more we have to debunk this stuff-

Joe Rogan 48:44 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 48:45 ... it's just a fire hose of debunkable stuff and everything takes a half an hour to explain what somebody screwed up in four seconds of the day.

Joe Rogan 48:52 But I think it's good to talk about it-

Eric Weinstein 48:54 I agree, but if, if-

Joe Rogan 48:54 ... 'cause then, and then people realize, like, "Okay, what does... why would he say that?" Well, because he's a bad mayor. The guy's-

Eric Weinstein 48:59 He's a bad mayor.

Joe Rogan 49:00 He's bad at his job. He's t- you saw the video that he put out about-

Eric Weinstein 49:03 No.

Joe Rogan 49:03 ... how we have to bring back New York City with culture? Did you see that? You wanna l- you wanna see the craziest-

Eric Weinstein 49:08 Yep.

Joe Rogan 49:08 ... fucking thing you've ever-

Eric Weinstein 49:09 Sure.

Joe Rogan 49:09 ... seen in your life?

Eric Weinstein 49:09 All right.

Joe Rogan 49:10 Jamie, find that v- it's on my, uh, Twitter page. It is... It seems like a sketch from SNL back when SNL was funny. It is hill- SNL is still funny sometimes.I shouldn't have said that. I take it back.

Eric Weinstein 49:21 Goes for, it goes for periods where it is-

Joe Rogan 49:23 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 49:23 ... and then it isn't.

Joe Rogan 49:23 Well, it's hard to do 90 minutes of f- f- live shit every week. But the point is, it seems like a sketch, it seems like a parody. You, it's, you know, here's what it seems like. It seems like a scene in a Coen brothers movie where a mayor is out of his fucking mind. Go, go full screen and give me some volume, 'cause this is fucking completely crazy. Watch this.

Eric Weinstein 49:44 Mm.

Joe Rogan 49:45 You're not gonna believe this. So, people just listening-

Narrator 49:50 We need a recovery that brings back the life-

Joe Rogan 49:52 There's people dancing completely out of sync.

Narrator 49:55 ... and the energy of this city and then everyone gets to be a part of. And if we're gonna do that, we're gonna really bring back the heart and soul of New York City. We need our arts and culture back and we need people to see it and feel it, to participate in it, to know that that essence of New York City has not been defeated by the coronavirus, but will come back strong in 2021. Month after month in 2021, as you see this city come back to life, culture will lead the way.

Joe Rogan 50:18 Open culture is another step towards that recovery for our city. If you saw the video of this- We're launching an urban entertainment district in no time. ... you would know how fucking preposterous this is. And then this guy is talking about they're doing, I mean, they got the lispius, most, uh, Hispanic gentleman they could find to s- speak about this, #openculture. And so listen to this music. It's, it's fucking terrible. And what are these people doing? What is this dance? So, they're spending money on this. So, this is, the, the, the city's falling apart, restaurants are disappearing left and right, small businesses are disappearing left and right, 90% of all the moving trucks are going out of New York City-

Eric Weinstein 50:57 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:57 ... and this is, this is his solution to this. Because these people don't have any respect for business. They, they somehow or another think this money falls out of trees, and that you just need to rest- redistribute this money, 'cause the rich people, they have too much of it, so redistribute this money. And the way we're gonna redistribute it, we're gonna open up culture and we're gonna bring back dance. Like, what the fuck is that? Like, what is that? Imagine that you are the mayor of one of the biggest cities on planet Earth, and that's your solution. Like, this is a big video that you put together and you have these people dancing and doing all this cra- it, it's so uncoordinated, the music is so bad, it seems like a sketch. This is what you're dealing with. And this is the same guy that was saying that Donald Trump was responsible for this criminally insane person who kicked the shit out of this poor old lady.

Eric Weinstein 51:49 I can't. I, I, I listen to this stuff, Joe, and I, I just despair. I know what we're capable of. I know how amazing we are as human beings. And I, and I watch this stuff. Like, if you, imagine if you had Pilobolus, right? You ever seen Pilobolus?

Joe Rogan 52:06 What's Pilobolus?

Eric Weinstein 52:08 Can I say this?

Joe Rogan 52:09 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 52:09 Jamie, pull that up.

Joe Rogan 52:12 Pull up Pilobolus, Jamie.

Eric Weinstein 52:13 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 52:14 Seems like an old Greek guy that I'm not aware of.

Eric Weinstein 52:16 Yeah. One of the great dance philosophers of all time.

Narrator 52:19 Pilobolus is what you mean?

Eric Weinstein 52:20 Pilobolus.

Narrator 52:21 Okay.

Joe Rogan 52:21 Jamie, you're not aware of it either? Good, I don't feel alone.

Eric Weinstein 52:23 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 52:25 I, I, I know what you're saying, that it's terrible-

Eric Weinstein 52:27 I mean, like, even if you're gonna make a wrong point, you're in New York City. How much great dance is there? You know, you-

Joe Rogan 52:33 Right, real dance, yeah.

Eric Weinstein 52:33 I've seen stuff on the subway using the poles and everything-

Joe Rogan 52:36 Yes.

Eric Weinstein 52:36 ... that's available-

Joe Rogan 52:37 Yes.

Eric Weinstein 52:37 ... that'll blow my m-

Joe Rogan 52:39 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 52:39 ... guaranteed.

Joe Rogan 52:40 They coulda had break dancers out there. They could, they coulda had hip hop guys out there doing, like, Stance Elements guys and it would've been amazing. What do you got? You got something crazy?

Narrator 52:49 I don't, I-

Joe Rogan 52:50 Why are you smiling?

Narrator 52:50 I'm not sure what I'm looking up.

Eric Weinstein 52:52 Pilobolus dance?

Narrator 52:54 Okay. That's, all right.

Joe Rogan 52:55 Pilobolus dance. Is this Pilobolus? There he goes. We are Pilobolus. Oh, wow. Yeah. Okay. So, these are, these are talented dancers.

Eric Weinstein 53:06 Yeah, you, you-

Joe Rogan 53:07 This is difficult.

Eric Weinstein 53:08 Yeah, it's really-

Joe Rogan 53:08 Unbelievably difficult.

Narrator 53:09 It's unbelievably gorgeous, beautiful-

Joe Rogan 53:11 Yeah.

Narrator 53:11 ... difficult. Okay. If you saw that as an example, that can blow your mind-

Joe Rogan 53:17 Right.

Narrator 53:17 ... very quickly and-

Joe Rogan 53:19 Sure.

Narrator 53:20 ... yeah. Okay.

Eric Weinstein 53:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 53:20 For sure. Yeah. No, I'm not against dance. Dance is pretty cool.

Eric Weinstein 53:24 No, I, I got your point.

Joe Rogan 53:25 But that was, that thing was nonsense. But here's what I think. It's almost better-

Eric Weinstein 53:29 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 53:29 ... when it's irrefutable, when the nonsense like de Blasio's video or him saying that this guy who got out of jail recently for stabbing his mother to death-

Eric Weinstein 53:38 Right.

Joe Rogan 53:38 ... that the reason why he kicked the shit out of this Asian lady was 'cause of Donald Trump. This guy might not have even known Donald Trump-

Eric Weinstein 53:43 I-

Joe Rogan 53:43 ... was a thing.

Eric Weinstein 53:45 I, did you see my graph from, like, Google Ngrams, which was, uh, diversity and inclusion usage versus most qualified, and they cross in 2017? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 53:55 (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 53:55 And most qualified is going down and diversity inclusion is going through the roof. You know, like, we can talk about this, but I want to know every cool thing that you know. And like, this? It's just dumb.

Joe Rogan 54:09 It is just dumb.

Eric Weinstein 54:09 And it's corroding my soul.

Joe Rogan 54:10 But it's happening and it's-

Eric Weinstein 54:11 I'm getting worse, it's like, it's like playing tennis with people who can't play tennis-

Joe Rogan 54:15 Right.

Eric Weinstein 54:15 ... and you used to be really good at tennis, and now, like, when you fight people, do you wanna fight people who suck?

Joe Rogan 54:21 No, you certainly don't.

Eric Weinstein 54:21 You're gonna get injured.

Joe Rogan 54:22 Well, worse than that. You're gonna get a false sense of your abilities.

Eric Weinstein 54:26 Yeah, and you're also gonna degre- like, all sorts of bad things.

Joe Rogan 54:29 Jamie's got something else going on.

Narrator 54:30 This is, I was looking this up, this is what I was seeing, that he blames the parole system.

Joe Rogan 54:34 State parole system. Oh. Well, he's right about that. But what I saw him was saying that it was Donald Trump. Am I incorrect here?

Narrator 54:40 I tried to find even him blaming Trump for it and wasn't seeing that.

Joe Rogan 54:43 Well, he was blaming what happened in DC. That's what he was saying.

Narrator 54:47 Ah.

Joe Rogan 54:48 And someone, someone had a video exposing that, that it was not true.

Narrator 54:51 It could've just been him going back and forth.

Joe Rogan 54:51 If that's true, well, he's correct here. He blames the state parole system? Well, then I take it back, 'cause he's absolutely right with that. There's no way that guy shoulda been let out. Maybe he had one statement on it and now today he's released a different one.

Narrator 55:04 Could be.

Joe Rogan 55:04 'Cause he wasn't standing in front of these flags like this. It was a different scene.

Eric Weinstein 55:07 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 55:07 I believe. But the-

Eric Weinstein 55:09 And you saw that carjacking in DC.

Joe Rogan 55:10 I did.

Eric Weinstein 55:11 And-

Joe Rogan 55:11 This is, I'll take this back then, 'cause he's definitely correct. There's no way that guy shoulda been on parole. That guy murdered his fucking mother, you know? And then he attacked that lady in, in Midtown.... so maybe I'm wrong.

Eric Weinstein 55:26 I just, um-

Joe Rogan 55:27 Maybe I, maybe I got duped, 'cause I watched a whole video where they were explaining what was... I forget, I don't even remember who, who was hosting the video. But they were talking about how wrong his perspective is on that.

Eric Weinstein 55:41 Hey. Uh, but I guess-

Joe Rogan 55:43 But I did, I did see the, the guy that got his car car-jacked and then died.

Eric Weinstein 55:46 I just, I just despaired, uh, the fact that the girl, you know?

Joe Rogan 55:49 What channel?

Eric Weinstein 55:50 That's not incorrect, I guess. This is from an older thing, though. This is from 2016 where he's blaming Trump on hate speech for rising hate crime, so that could be-

Joe Rogan 55:56 No, that was a different one.

Eric Weinstein 55:57 Okay.

Joe Rogan 55:58 Well, I don't think he, he necessarily said Trump. He was just talking about... Well, I don't know. I'm not sure. But the point is-

Eric Weinstein 56:06 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:06 ... he's right. He's right. It is the parole system that did that. But this, uh, this carjacking, this is, these are... My perspective on the carjacking is different, because they're, a 13-year-old and a 15-year-old kid.

Eric Weinstein 56:20 15-year-old.

Joe Rogan 56:20 They're children.

Eric Weinstein 56:20 Can I freshen your breath?

Joe Rogan 56:21 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Eric Weinstein 56:22 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 56:22 I mean, you're talking about, you know, re- a really unfortunate situation where you have these young kids that stole this Uber driver's car and he tried to stop that from happening and wound up dying. It's horrific. If you've never seen the video, please don't watch it. It's hor- it's horrible.

Eric Weinstein 56:40 Well, the part, hardest part for me is where the girl says, "My phone is in the car."

Joe Rogan 56:43 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 56:44 And, and the guy is-

Joe Rogan 56:44 Dead.

Eric Weinstein 56:45 Nobody cares about the guy thrown from the car.

Joe Rogan 56:48 No.

Eric Weinstein 56:48 Like, the, the, the, the troops or the National Guard doesn't seem to care. The girls don't seem to care.

Joe Rogan 56:53 I don't think the National Guard, at that moment, necessarily knew what happened.

Eric Weinstein 56:56 Well, it was very confusing, but, you know-

Joe Rogan 56:58 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 56:58 ... she practically trips over the guy trying to get to her phone in the car.

Joe Rogan 57:01 No, it's awful.

Eric Weinstein 57:02 It, uh, it's-

Joe Rogan 57:03 It's, it's certainly awful.

Eric Weinstein 57:03 I-

Joe Rogan 57:04 But I think-

Eric Weinstein 57:04 You know, my soul is corroding from all this stuff. I'm watching this and I'm internalizing it. And I'm, I know I'm supposed to sort of take a step back. I am so worried about the degradation of who we are because we can't figure out how to say no mas.

Joe Rogan 57:20 I, I think this is different. See-

Eric Weinstein 57:22 Okay.

Joe Rogan 57:22 ... the, the, the, I'm not, in any way, exonerating those young girls who stole that car and killed that guy. But I think the National Guard people that pulled up on the scene, I don't think they knew what happened. I don't think they had an... There's no way they could've known these girls stole that car.

Eric Weinstein 57:35 It's a confusing situation.

Joe Rogan 57:37 This guy's dead, the car-

Eric Weinstein 57:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 57:38 ... is flipped over. The girls are in shock.

Eric Weinstein 57:40 Right.

Joe Rogan 57:40 The girl's saying, "Where's my phone?"

Eric Weinstein 57:42 I know.

Joe Rogan 57:42 Like, I, I don't blame the gu- the Guard guys probably are horrified once they realize that this, these girls had stole this guy's car. And I don't... If you're a 13-year-old kid and you steal a car and all of a sudden the guy's dead, you're probably, your prob- your whole life is probably like (imitates explosion) .

Eric Weinstein 58:00 Yeah, but what I, what I'm worried about is-

Joe Rogan 58:01 Like, you probably have no idea what the fuck just happened.

Eric Weinstein 58:03 Okay. I'm worried about something I'm calling video game mode, which is the more I stare at my screen and then I have to context switch between my screen and real life, my screen and real life-

Joe Rogan 58:12 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 58:12 ... the more real life feels like my screen, the more I can't tell the difference. And it's not that I'm dumb. It's that my pro- my evolutionary programming doesn't know anything about this screen.

Joe Rogan 58:22 I know what you're saying.

Eric Weinstein 58:23 And what my concern is, is that we don't feel our own life and our own interest anymore. Like, we don't realize what we're doing. We imagine that we are characters in a video game. There's always a restart, there's always some exploit that y- y- you can use to start again. And I'm increasingly feeling like reality is slipping away from us because the phone... It's a little bit like what happened with porn. We thought that porn was going to habituate us to, like, nonstandard sexual practices, and to an extent it did. But I don't think what we really understood is, is that it was gonna rewire us so that it was very difficult f- to get aroused about anything because it changes your hedonic thresholds. I think the same thing is true for real, for real life versus the phone. The phone is, in some sense, so much more intense for most people that that environment starts to blot out the feeling of being fully alive.

Joe Rogan 59:20 So you, you think that the reason why they were so desensitized-

Eric Weinstein 59:25 I can't say that because it's shock, it's-

Joe Rogan 59:27 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 59:27 ... a crazy situation, it's the first few seconds. Fog can be the explanation.

Joe Rogan 59:31 Okay.

Eric Weinstein 59:31 However, I increasingly see people, like the Capitol Hill thing on January 6th, very clearly that woman was, you know, dealing with a loaded pistol, right? And you see the guy, uh, who's holding the gun take the finger and bring it inside the trigger guard, and then he goes back out, because he's like pointing it at her.

Joe Rogan 59:55 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 59:55 And he understands what he's doing. It's like, "Please don't advance." And she, she has an idea that somehow she's protected because she's part of this romantic-

Joe Rogan 1:00:06 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 1:00:07 ... story in her own mind. And-

Joe Rogan 1:00:09 Yeah, I see what you're saying.

Eric Weinstein 1:00:09 ... you know, I really believe that the Viking and, like, all of it, Trump, you know, and all of this stuff, people don't feel fully alive. They don't realize we are actually attacking the Capitol Building of the United States of America.

Joe Rogan 1:00:23 That they didn't realize what they were doing while they were doing it.

Eric Weinstein 1:00:25 I think the idea is we-

Joe Rogan 1:00:26 I don't think that's true.

Eric Weinstein 1:00:26 ... we're in a sort, sort of live action role playing and I believe that, you know, sometimes people probably go into combat that way.

Joe Rogan 1:00:34 Maybe. I think those people genuinely thought that they were patriots.

Eric Weinstein 1:00:38 Yep.

Joe Rogan 1:00:38 And I also think a lot of them are genuinely not bright. There's a lot of those guys that I saw being interviewed where they were talking about why they were doing-

Eric Weinstein 1:00:47 I watched people come out of it. I watched people snap out. A lot of people were like, "The moment that I realized I was too far in," and then such and such. It was like a c-

Joe Rogan 1:00:54 You get caught up in the crowd.

Eric Weinstein 1:00:55 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:00:55 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 1:00:55 You get caught up in the, in the narrative.

Joe Rogan 1:00:57 But it's al- but also I watched people, like particularly that guy with the Buffalo hat on-

Eric Weinstein 1:01:00 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:01:00 ... that got interviewed. That's a dumb guy. He's a, a dumb guy who is good at stringing words together with, you know, QAnon themes.

Eric Weinstein 1:01:10 You mean the guy smiling with the podium?

Joe Rogan 1:01:11 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 1:01:11 With the lectern?

Joe Rogan 1:01:12 Yeah. Yeah. There was a lot of that going on. These, these are men mostly.

Eric Weinstein 1:01:18 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:01:18 There, there was a few women, but men who are, uh, unexceptional that think they're exceptional because they're tied into a thing that they believe is like a movement-

Eric Weinstein 1:01:28 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:01:28 ... to, uh, to, to free-... to, to, the, the, I think they just believe democracy is being served in some strange-

Eric Weinstein 1:01:37 I-

Joe Rogan 1:01:37 ... fucking way.

Eric Weinstein 1:01:37 Well, no, look, there, there were two narratives.

Joe Rogan 1:01:39 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 1:01:39 There was a narrative called stop the steal and there was a narrative called-

Joe Rogan 1:01:42 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 1:01:42 ... certify the election, and they avoided themselves as long as they possibly could, and I was watching them, and I was, I did a tweet storm on January 4th because I could see January 6th was going to be the arc point. Very often, you know, like, when you say Twitter isn't real life, it really isn't up until it arcs, and then you get a spark across it and then holy shit-

Joe Rogan 1:02:01 Then it becomes like real life.

Eric Weinstein 1:02:02 Yeah, exactly.

Joe Rogan 1:02:02 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 1:02:02 It is real life, right? And so there are these twin narrative problems where you've got these two incompatible world views and these stories, and they avoid each other like two guys circling each other, "I'm gonna fuck you up. I'm gonna fuck you up."

Joe Rogan 1:02:13 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 1:02:14 But both of them know that, like, once we actually engage, it's pretty unpredictable what's about to happen. That's what I think you could see coming for January 6th. It had to happen that way, in a weird way, because they have... The narratives had avoided each other for the maximal length of time because nobody wanted to have this out. And then it was impossible to stop the two from arcing, and the plates got too close together. That's what I really believe constantly happened.

Joe Rogan 1:02:40 I see what you're saying. So, what you're saying is that you think that there's two worlds that aren't communicating with each other, and both of them believe wholeheartedly in what they're doing without listening to whatever might be reasonable that's coming from the other side, and then they collide.

Eric Weinstein 1:02:56 And there's no way of squaring the circle. Like, at some point there will be a, a Donald Trump presidency or a Joe Biden presidency, and-

Joe Rogan 1:03:04 Mm-hmm.

Eric Weinstein 1:03:04 ... once you realize that your story has collapsed, it's like a doomsday cult. You say it's gonna end on such and such a day, and then it doesn't, and then what happens to the cult? Because everybody had the same concept. I think that if you look at, like, if you listen to the audio from the Jim Jones, uh, Jonestown massacre-

Joe Rogan 1:03:20 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 1:03:21 ... it's very clear that they got caught up in a story that they couldn't get out of.

Joe Rogan 1:03:25 That's what happens in all cults, right?

Eric Weinstein 1:03:26 Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. And the story becomes... The software that you're running... Like, there was this one woman, um, named Hyacinth who hid under her bed and survived, you know? And-

Joe Rogan 1:03:39 Survived?

Eric Weinstein 1:03:40 Jonestown.

Joe Rogan 1:03:41 Oh.

Eric Weinstein 1:03:42 You know, and her sister perished. Um, and somehow she ran a program that was different than the program that ever... Because you, you have the recordings. People know that they're going to their death. They know... The software is telling them that this is the right thing. It's, it's a revolutionary suicide. And I saw this with people. You know, I was trying to tell people, because I, I didn't believe the election was necessarily free and fair, but I also didn't believe that it was stolen in the way that Donald Trump was saying it was stolen. It was-

Joe Rogan 1:04:13 I feel the exact same way.

Eric Weinstein 1:04:14 Yeah. So, you know, I was watching people who couldn't nego- they couldn't keep their footing, and this is, you know, the really tough-

Joe Rogan 1:04:22 They were also struggling to find, like, common ground-

Eric Weinstein 1:04:24 When they wanna go for-

Joe Rogan 1:04:25 ... with their team.

Eric Weinstein 1:04:26 Y- Exactly right. I was gonna say the same thing. People who feel comfortable being alone are in a different situation than people who say, "Well, I have to pick a team constantly."

Joe Rogan 1:04:34 Yes. Right, right.

Eric Weinstein 1:04:35 And, you know, the, the, the greatest thing that has ever happened to me is the ability to stand alone for some (laughs) periods of time. I do need a family, I need to be a part of something, but there are times when there is no team that it represents reality.

Joe Rogan 1:04:48 We all need people. We all do. We all need-

Eric Weinstein 1:04:51 I hate to admit it, but you're right.

Joe Rogan 1:04:52 Yeah, we all need loved ones and friends, and people don't operate well. That's why when you're in prison, the worst thing they could do to you in prison is to leave you alone.

Eric Weinstein 1:05:01 It's solid. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:02 You're in a fucking cement building filled with rapists and murderers. The worst shit-

Eric Weinstein 1:05:06 It is.

Joe Rogan 1:05:06 ... they can do is leave you alone.

Eric Weinstein 1:05:07 Leave you alone. It's a really interesting point.

Joe Rogan 1:05:08 It's strange. We are, uh, very social animals, but the one- It's like, the ones that can go the longest in solitude and-

Eric Weinstein 1:05:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:19 ... just think by themselves, there's a great benefit to that. I was forced into it because when I was a ki- uh, wh- when I was a kid, we moved around a lot. We moved when I was seven to San Francisco, when I was 11 we moved to Florida, when I was 13 we moved to Boston. I was forced to form my own opinions about things because I didn't have a steady group of friends where we all agreed on a certain narrative.

Eric Weinstein 1:05:39 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:05:40 That's a real problem with people in this country, agreeing on a certain narrative where you know socially that you have a contract you have to uphold. You're socially... Y- y- y- you're, you're, you're i- intertwined with this narrative, and you can't think outside the bo- If you say, "Hey, guys, you know, I don't think there's anything wrong with that." Like-

Eric Weinstein 1:05:57 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:05:57 ... "Let's look at this logically." They'll go, "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

Eric Weinstein 1:06:00 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:06:00 And then you got a real problem because the people, they, people want compliance. This is what's going on with wokeness-

Eric Weinstein 1:06:08 Okay.

Joe Rogan 1:06:08 ... with wa- wa- what a lot of what wokeness is, is these socially low status people who are gaining power-

Eric Weinstein 1:06:19 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:06:19 ... by enforcing this narrative and attacking people who don't enforce the narrative.

Eric Weinstein 1:06:24 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:06:24 They're bullying people who don't enforce the narrative. You know, you know the, the phrase, "Hurt people hurt people."

Eric Weinstein 1:06:31 "Hurt people..."

Joe Rogan 1:06:31 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 1:06:31 All the time.

Joe Rogan 1:06:32 Well, people who have been bullied, they tend to bully people.

Eric Weinstein 1:06:34 No kidding. I agree.

Joe Rogan 1:06:35 And a lot of fucking dorks when, you know, they've been pushed around in high school and college and, uh, socially they've been very awkward, my God, they get on that goddamn computer and they attack, and they love to attack.

Eric Weinstein 1:06:46 Well, Tim Ferriss tried to do Bigoteer, and other people tried Cry Bullies, so there was-

Joe Rogan 1:06:50 What's a Bigoteer?

Eric Weinstein 1:06:51 Bigoteer is somebody who trafficks-

Joe Rogan 1:06:53 That's what he called it? Oh, that's a great-

Eric Weinstein 1:06:54 It's pretty good, right?

Joe Rogan 1:06:54 That's a great phrase.

Eric Weinstein 1:06:55 H- Tim's good.

Joe Rogan 1:06:55 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 1:06:56 Um, but Cry Bullies is another one, and hurt people hurt people.

Joe Rogan 1:07:00 Yeah.

Eric Weinstein 1:07:00 All of these things get at this concept, and I do think that this issue about how co- what does it take to be alone for a long time? And then, the part of the problem is those of us who are very good at being alone for a long time can overstay.

Joe Rogan 1:07:14 You can overstay being alone, and then you're, next thing you know, you're Ted Kaczynski. (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 1:07:17 Well, mathematician.

Joe Rogan 1:07:20 Yeah. Yes.

Eric Weinstein 1:07:21 Speaking of which, I asked you for this date, April 1st. This is a favor to me.

Joe Rogan 1:07:26 Yeah, why?

Eric Weinstein 1:07:29 I want you to have this. This is-

Joe Rogan 1:07:30 What is this nonsense? You give me a stack of papers. You know I don't like reading.

Eric Weinstein 1:07:34 I- You're not gonna be able to read it.

Joe Rogan 1:07:36 Oh, this is your n- your unity theory?

Eric Weinstein 1:07:38 This is the first...... a copy. It- it got to version 1.0. I want you to have it. And I wanted-

Joe Rogan 1:07:44 Listen, you're, you lost me. There's all these equations in here and, "Jamie, take this and make something out of it." (laughs) What is this?

Eric Weinstein 1:07:53 I believe, and this is the, this is the hardest-

Joe Rogan 1:07:55 Ah.

Eric Weinstein 1:07:55 This is the hardest part. Um-

Joe Rogan 1:07:59 How do you have time to do this while you're still on Clubhouse?

Eric Weinstein 1:08:02 I'm not really on Clubhouse, it's a bot. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:08:04 (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 1:08:06 Not that low-quality stuff I push out. Um, this is something that I've been uncomfortable about sharing. I've been in a, what I call the ice cave, for about 37 years, and I shared a little bit of it in 2013, and then I shared a little bit of it last year, April 1st. And I am coming to grips with a story, and in part, you don't know this, but you've been playing a large role in my thinking, um, about this. And-

Joe Rogan 1:08:36 Well, that's a problem. (laughs)

Eric Weinstein 1:08:38 No. No. I reviewed this weird episode of you at the, at the store, when you took a break for seven years, and I looked at the courage that you had to do, that you had to have to do something unfunny in a funny context and I think it was an incredibly difficult situation, and I th- think I've been running from a similar situation my whole life. I don't wanna face certain unpleasant facts that are out of keeping with the joy that I feel, with the love, with the creativity that I feel, and I don't want to let certain kinds of negativity take over my life. And then I have this other thing which is, I leg- legitimately believe that if we are not very careful, theoretical physics is coming to an end, and I believe it is our only hope for getting outside the solar system. When you have Elon on and he talks about Mars or bust and all this kind of stuff, I cannot understand how mankind has gotten to the point where we are not spending our efforts trying to figure out how to spread out so that we don't self-extinguish on one, two, or three rocks. It just doesn't make a s- any sense to me. And the best hope we have is to go beyond Einstein, and we're, we're losing the belief that we're capable of it. We're so worried about the professional norms and humiliation and what's going to happen if we say something and our, what our colleagues are gonna say and all of this stuff that we're, we're self-censoring and we're silencing ourselves because we'd rather be in good standing on the Titanic than risk saying, "Holy shit, we're in an iceberg field. Let's think about how we're gonna survive this." And I've been being a pussy about this.

Joe Rogan 1:10:29 Well, what is it? Explain what it is. What-

Eric Weinstein 1:10:32 But this-

Joe Rogan 1:10:32 ... what does it, what is this thing that you j- you handed me? What is this?

Eric Weinstein 1:10:36 It is... Okay, this is the hardest thing for me to say because-

Joe Rogan 1:10:39 Okay.

Eric Weinstein 1:10:39 ... I- I have to not hedge it. I think it's the theory of everything.

Joe Rogan 1:10:43 And what do you mean by that?

Eric Weinstein 1:10:47 There is a moment where you have to say, "This I believe about a radical departure," and you don't wanna say it because you wanna hedge it. It is, i- Jamie, if you could bring that up and you go a little bit, uh, maybe two pages in.

Joe Rogan 1:11:05 Is this available online so someone can peruse it?

Eric Weinstein 1:11:07 In fact, uh, okay, right there on the left. Uh, go down. That table. You see where it says x4?

Joe Rogan 1:11:18 Yes.

Eric Weinstein 1:11:19 X4 is four parameters. It could be salty, sweet, sour, bitter. It could be low, uh, treble, medium, uh, bass, and volume. And the question that I took from Einstein was, can we generate the world, everything from something as innocuous as four parameters? And if you think about a fertilized egg, somebody can hand you a picture of an embryo in in vitro fertilization, and you're like, "Well, that's your, that's your child to be." You're like, "Get